A book-length survey of federal and state law pertinent to population growth and distribution. The survey will summarize and classify present and past laws bearing on population growth and distribution and assess them in the light of what is known about population policy alternatives, institutional constraints, and incentive structures. It will cover the following: population and environmental overload; optimum population; government influence on natality; history of existing laws bearing on population; policy options; and prospects for adoption of needed new laws. The survey will focus on the problem of reconciling long-run and short-run needs. Under American conditions, population growth is generally good in the short run, bad in the long run. Most individuals and institutions, for sound reasons, are focused on short-run needs. For population, as for many environmental problem areas, a longer time horizon is needed, and a clearer understanding of institutional capacities to cope with problems which, though caused by today's actions, will not come to a head for decades. It is possible to cope with many such problems in an organizational sense, and it may be possible to cope with some such problems in a substantive sense, despite the great hazards of extended forecasts. Theoretical material on law and social change, applied to case histories of population-pertinent laws, can cast light on our past record and present prospects of anticipating and dealing with long-term needs.